Boston Globe editorial staff: President Trump has ‘blood on his hands’ for coronavirus response

The Boston Globe editorial board said that President Donald Trump has "blood on his hands" for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in an editorial published Monday.

The writers called the president "epically outmatched" by the global pandemic, and argued that his delayed response to the outbreak — including his administration's refusal to adopt the World Health Organization's diagnostic test — "will cost thousands if not hundreds of thousands of American lives."

"As the American public braces itself for the worst of this crisis, it's worth remembering that the reach of the virus here is not attributable to an act of God or a foreign invasion, but a colossal failure of leadership," the editorial began.

"The months the administration wasted with prevarication [lies] about the threat and its subsequent missteps will amount to exponentially more COVID-19 cases than were necessary," it continued.

"In other words, the president has blood on his hands," the writers concluded.

The editorial staff maintained that the president's inaction must not go unpunished, however, asserting that "come November, there must be a reckoning for the lives lost."

The editorial staff seem to paint a picture of a rogue president acting out of order and without the support of public health officials and state political officials. But, that is simply not the reality of the situation.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, the two leading health officials on the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, came to Trump's defense Tuesday after a White House reporter launched a similar accusation at the president, suggesting that his delayed response to the virus cost countless lives.

"This may be an uncomfortable question, what would the models have looked like, that Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci showed us, if we had started the social distancing guidelines sooner in February, or January, when China and South Korea were doing those sorts of things," asked CNN reporter Jim Acosta in reference to updated death toll projections.

Birx hit back saying that a lack of information about the virus from China hampered the U.S. response.

Fauci went further, dismantling the question's assumptions and scolding Acosta for seeking a media soundbite.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 190,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in the U.S., which had resulted in over 4,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. As confirmed cases and deaths continue to rise in America, on Tuesday, Trump warned of a "painful two weeks" ahead for the country.